A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
across the seas. It has no buildings, nor is it clear where the buildings will be, but it is to begin its career with university extension lectures (extension from what?) to American troops in Bedfordshire, and it proposes to confer "any and all recognised uni- versity degrees" Its first Vice-Chancellor is Dr. F. W. Crossley- Holland, who is D.L., J.P. and C.C. (Bedfordshire) and in Free- masonry is P.S.G.D., P.Gd.Soj., P.M., P.Z., P.P.G.O. (Essex), P.P.G.P.S., P.P.G.C.O. (Bedfordshire) 30°. I take these particulars from Who's Who, where there is much else that repays study. Incidentally, the Vice-Chancellor is "Member Eastern Regional Council, Cambridge ; University Fellowship, 1896." This perplexes a little. Fellow of Cambridge University? In my time it was colleges who granted fellowships, not the university, and the University Calendar has no reference to such things. Perhaps I am wrong, or perhaps the university in question is not Cambridge, in spite of what the context would suggest. But I shall follow the fortunes of the University of Sulgrave with some curiosity. That emotion extends, incidentally, to some of Dr. Crossley-Holland's many degrees—D.C.L., D.Sc.(hon.), M.D., for example, regarding which the usual particulars as to the granting body do not appear. Has any of them anything to do with the Intercollegiate University, in which the Vice-Chancellor of Sulgrave has, I believe, been a leading figure? His L.M.S.S.A.(Lond.), 1929, of course, raises no question. I should like to be satisfied that the whole affair makes for amity and confidence in Anglo-American relations.
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The more we learn about our ally Russia the better, and some of the out-of-the-way things are as useful as the more obvious. In reading (a little belatedly) Mr. Joseph Davies' Mission to Moscow I have been struck by two points in particular. One was that in this rigorous, austere State Mme. Molotov, wife of the Commissar for Foreign Affairs,—or anyone else for the matter of that—could hold the office of Commissar for Cosmetics, which is presumably not less important than her previous post of Commissar for Fisheries. The other is the American Ambassador's note on the social and economic significance of the price of flowers. "Here," he writes, "were shops owned by the State selling flowers in baskets at prices ranging in gold value from $z to $15 (say 8s. to nearly La)," and he points out that since every young man was anxioris to give a par- ticular lady better and more costly flowers than his rival he found it necessary to earn more money at his trade and "could do so only through the application of the profit motive, the bane of pure Communism." He apparently did it without compunction.
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I should never have dreamed of writing of Dr. Joad's soul if he had not drawn such pointed attention to it himself. What he said about it in the Brains Trust on Tuesday week seemed so singular that I listened again with particular care when the fixture was repeated on the following Sunday. In the course of a discussion on planning work and leisure Dr. Toad declared himself for planning the latter at any rate down to the last second, on the ground that for him life must definitely have no vacant spaces ; you must never have enough leisure to Wonder whether you are miserable, leave yourself no leisure for looking within. "Whenever I look inside myself," said Dr. load, "I am afraid." He, of course, knows what he sees there ; I don't. But to be afraid to survey one's own soul and bruit the fact to the world over the wireless seems to me as I say,—singular.
Information reaches me indirectly from Switzerland to the effect that every day German officers, mostly men who served last year in Russia and dread the prospect of being sent back, are slipping across the Swiss frontier by ones and twos. With that comes a story of a knot of seven or eight Germans who were trying to get into Switzerland from France. When near the frontier, some- where in the Juras, they noticed that they were being followed by half a dozen people at a discreet distance. They tried to elude the pursuit, but unsuccessfully, and finally both parties reached the frontier more or less together. The second lot proved to be Jews, bound on the same errand.
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At Chester Assizes, on Monday, a man charged with sabotage, consisting of leaving "the vital nut" on twenty aeroplane engines slack, was sentenced by Mr. Justice Charles to three years' penal servitude. The judge rightly observed, "I cannot imagine a more appalling crime. As a result of what you have deliberately done, pilots' lives may have been lost, and there may have been even further disastrous consequences." Could the learned judge not have imagined a sentence rather better proportioned to a crime so characterised? Fourteen years is, I believe, the maximum on such a charge. For what kind of offence would that be imposed if three years is appropriate for this?
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My specialist in Archbishops, who suggested (as I said last week) that the last four occupants of the See of Canterbury had only one child between them, the present Archbishop, appears to have been mistaken. Dr. Temple, I find, has an elder brother, an engineer of considerable distinction. His existence rather spoils my paragraph, but I do not grudge him it, particularly as I believe he is doing valuable work preventing the consumption of coals at Newcastle (whether carried to or originating in that vicinity).
An eminent divine (not Dr. Temple), who has been applying his mind to the profit-motive question, has devised a coat of arms and motto for crusaders in the campaign. The former, stripped of heraldic terminology, represents the whale disgorging Jonah ; the latter runs, "I denounce all profits." From the same source (hence the relevance of the otherwise irrelevant) comes news of an aged Methodist who prayed with fervour, "Oh Lord, use me as Thou wilt,—if only in an advisory capacity."
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Let us make the most of what light there is in this dark struggle I understand there is not a single known case of Red Cross parcel, for prisoners of war in Germany being stolen—even though the parcels enable the prisoners to maintain a better standard of livin4 than many classes of the population of Germany itself.
Arms.
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